RIT Libraries Strategic Plan
Strengthen Collections
The primary focus of the Library collection acquisition practice has been on building a teaching collection for undergraduate students. With RIT's strategic focus on applied research and scholarship, the electronic and print collections will need to grow significantly in all areas.
To strengthen collections we propose to:
- Advocate for an increase to materials acquisitions budgets, both print and electronic, incrementally over the next 5 years with the focus on building full-text collections such as complete JSTOR backfile, Social Science Citation Abstracts etc. as based on needs analysis vis-à-vis scholarship.
- Build an entrepreneurial collection which will have importance to users across disciplines and departments on campus.
- Expand the use of consortiums like Connect NY to increase access to shared collections, both print and electronic.
Some of the elements of the RIT Strategic Plan addressed by this goal include:
Goal C3: RIT will increase the quality and quantity of scholarship in order to enhance both the education of our students and the reputation of our University.Goal C4: RIT will allocate resources to support scholarly activity, with particular attention to engaging students, adjusting workloads, and reducing barriers to cross-college collaboration in scholarship.
Comments (3 Total)
1. Andy Herbert | Monday, November 29 3:46 PM
2. Christine Kray | Tuesday, November 30 12:10 PM
The book collection for anthropology (and probably other social sciences) need to be expanded dramatically. Right now, the collection is very small and outdated. It is not useful for research (I rely on my own book collection, the University of Rochester, and Interlibrary Loan for that). What is most disappointing, though, is that the collection is insufficient for teaching purposes. When I want to send the students to the library to read books on their own, I have to give them a short list of outdated books. While I do agree that the electronic resources should be expanded, the book still remains the primary informational text in anthropology (as it does in history). Thank you very much for considering my comments and allowing us to be part of the process.
3. Anonymous | Friday, December 3 12:09 PM
Please consider bringing back the Media Mark series; these books provide extremely useful information to marketing students conducting research and are helpful to anyone interested in targeting a specific market of consumers.
Along with expanding document delivery, this should be the main focus for improving the library. You can have all the lounges you want, but the collection needs to be present to support scholarly activity.